U.S. Home Prices Up 7.2 Percent in 2016, Forecasted to Rise 4.7 Percent in 2017

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According to CoreLogic's latest Home Price Index for December 2016, U.S. home prices are up both year over year and month over month.

Home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased year over year by 7.2 percent in December 2016 compared with December 2015 and increased month over month by 0.8 percent in December 2016 compared with November 2016, according to the CoreLogic HPI.

The CoreLogic HPI Forecast indicates that home prices will increase by 4.7 percent on a year-over-year basis from December 2016 to December 2017, and on a month-over-month basis home prices are expected to increase by 0.1 percent from December 2016 to January 2017. The CoreLogic HPI Forecast is a projection of home prices using the CoreLogic HPI and other economic variables. Values are derived from state-level forecasts by weighting indices according to the number of owner-occupied households for each state.

"As of the end of 2016, the CoreLogic national index was 3.9 percent below the peak reached in April 2006," said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. "We expect our national index to rise 4.7 percent during 2017, which would put homes prices at a new nominal peak before the end of this year."

"Last year ended with a bang with home prices up over 7 percent nationally, led largely by major metro areas," said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. "We expect prices to continue to rise just under 5 percent in 2017 buoyed by lack of supply and continued high demand."